I used to hate regex, but after having had to use it a bunch and slowly getting used to the syntax, I can sort of read it quickly, and fully parse it if I stare at a regex expression long enough. It seems like having a DSL like regex is important because it does something well with a much shorter section of code than the equivalent host language code that does the same thing. But, it probably takes as long to understand a section of regex code as it does to understand the equivalent host language code, so it feels like you're staring at a small block of impenetrable code, where you would otherwise be scanning a larger block of code. If that makes sense

Props to the authors of this language